1. What does the business person do in the weeks/months before there is anything to sell?
2. How do you teach people to sell? Judging by the stories coming out of the major incubators pitching to investors is just a matter of iterating on your elevator speech and answering questions until you have sharpened your vision to a sentence or two. How do you formalize that process in a classroom setting?
2. Practice is a huge part of it. I also think its worthwhile to learn about the training programs bigger companies put their employees through. I have a few cd's from http://www.sandler.com/ that have been very helpful. If you have a friend who works in sales, they probably have a bunch of these.
2. Doing 1) correctly will help you to sell empathically. The best way to learn to sell is to begin with a true understanding of the customer's behavior, situation, and pain points, not so much about technique/flair.
What do you think that one can't sell something before it's available?
In some circumstances it's illegal to accept payment before a product is available, but you can always sell.
in the months before the sales guy can work on marketing, sales strategy, market research... building a reputation with the target audience.